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KMT retains majority but loses seats in legislative race (roundup)

ROC Central News Agency

2012/01/15 01:36:02

Taipei, Jan. 14 (CNA) The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) managed to retain its majority in the Legislative Yuan, capturing 64 of the 113 seats up for grabs in Saturday's elections.

The result left the KMT with a smaller majority than it has had over the past four years. The party currently controls 72 seats in the current legislature, which will be dissolved at the end of this month.

The main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won 40 seats, compared to 32 the party currently commands.

The remaining seats were secured by the People First Party (PFP), which took three, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), also with three, and the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union, which won two. The other seat was taken by an independent candidate.

Of the 113 newly elected lawmakers, 64 are incumbents and eight of the non-incumbents are former legislators. Their average age is 52.

Although the country's political map remains largely unchanged, with the KMT dominating the north and the DPP controlling the south, the DPP managed to make some inroads into traditional KMT strongholds.

The DPP won the only directly elected seat up for grabs respectively in Taitung in eastern Taiwan and on the outlying island of Penghu, both of which were traditionally controlled by the KMT and pro-KMT politicians.

It also managed to break the KMT's dominance of Taipei's eight seats in the 2008 election by securing a seat in the capital city's second electoral district.

The party also scored an unexpected landslide victory in Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, winning seven of the nine directly elected seats contested there.

The party snatched only three seats in the Kaohsiung area in the 2008 elections, while the KMT won six.

The DPP also picked up seats in Taichung, where it failed to win any of the eight seats contested in the region when it was still divided into Taichung City and Taichung County in 2008.

Tsai Chi-chang in district 1, former Government Information Office chief Lin Chia-lung in district 6, and Ho Hsin-chun in district 7, all won seats for the DPP in the central Taiwan city.

The DPP swept all five directly elected legislative seats in Tainan in southern Taiwan, as was the case in the 2008 elections.

Meanwhile, the KMT still maintained its tight hold on seats in northern Taiwan's three biggest administrative districts -- New Taipei, Taipei, and Taoyuan -- as well as Keelung and the predominantly Hakka areas of Hsinchu and Maioli.

The DPP's gains resulted in seven KMT incumbents who were directly elected in their electoral districts in 2008 being toppled Saturday.

The most prominent was Lin Yi-shih, a key member of the KMT caucus, who lost his bid for re-election in Kaohsiung's second electoral district by a margin of just over 2 percent.

Another KMT incumbent, Chiu Yi, who reached the Legislature as an at-large legislator in 2008 and is widely known for his persistent attacks against Chen Shui-bian and his family during Chen's term in office,was soundly defeated in Kaohsiung's seventh electoral district.

He lost to the DPP's Chao Tien-lin, who was one of Frank Hsieh's main campaign spokesmen during Hsieh's unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2008.

Another prominent figure to stumble Saturday was former President Chen's son Chen Chih-chung, who finished third in Kaohsiung's ninth electoral district as an independent candidate and split the pro-DPP vote, handing the KMT candidate a victory.

Both the KMT and the DPP recruited some big names, such as former national women's basketball team star Chien Wei-chuan and singer Yang Lie, to score breakthroughs in electoral districts where they lack strong support bases, but none of them succeeded in their bids.

Political analysts said that although the KMT managed to retain a majority, it would find it harder to dominate the new Legislature.

They also predicted that incumbent Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng would continue to play a critical role in the lawmaking body.

Under the current "single-member constituency, two-vote" system, legislators were elected in two different ways. Seventy-nine were directly elected to represent electoral districts, while 34 "at-large" seats were allocated based on a separate vote for political parties.

A party needed to get at least a 5 percent share of the vote in the party election to pick up "at-large" seats, designed to give smaller parties a chance to win representation in Taiwan's Legislature.

Only Taiwan's two main parties, the KMT and DPP, won at-large seats in 2008, but on Saturday, both the Taiwan Solidarity Union and the PFP also surpassed the 5 percent threshold.

(By Sofia Wu)
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